The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Semiconductor memory is widely used in various electronic devices such as mobile computing devices, mobile phones, solid-state drives, digital cameras, personal digital assistants, servers, and non-mobile computing devices. Semiconductor memory may comprise non-volatile memory or volatile memory. A non-volatile storage device allows information to be stored or retained even when the non-volatile storage device is not connected to a source of power (e.g., a battery). Examples of non-volatile memory include flash memory (e.g., NAND-type and NOR-type flash memory), Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM), ferroelectric memory (e.g., FeRAM), magnetoresistive memory (e.g., MRAM), and phase change memory (e.g., PRAM). In recent years, non-volatile storage devices have been scaled in order to reduce the cost per bit. However, as process geometries shrink, many design and process challenges are presented. These challenges include increased variability in memory cell I-V characteristics and increased susceptibility to write or program disturbs, in which data stored in non-targeted memory cells (or unselected memory cells) may be corrupted due to programming operations being performed on targeted memory cells (or memory cells that have been selected for programming).